Asos apprenticeships will keep us in fashion that’s made in Britain

Prêt-à-rapporter: the online retailer's new scheme will invest in the next generation of garment manufacturers in the UK.

BY Sarah Mower |
13 April 2011

3D textured dress, £150, asos.com

The piece I wrote two weeks ago about how the new generation of British designers are producing their beautiful clothes with local manufacturers generated a huge response from readers and Tweeters. Despite this groundswell of nationalistic pride, the skills to make these clothes are all too scarce in our factories, at a time when 15 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed.

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But there are positive moves going on to address that, too. One comes from
Asos
, the country's biggest online fashion retailer, which is funding the UK's first National Apprenticeship in Fashion and Textiles, linking with Fashion Enter, which was set up in Haringey, north London, last year and now produces 50,000 garments for Asos a week, including the 3D-textured Asos dress you see here.

Behind the initiative are two visionary women, Caren Downie, merchandise director at Asos, who has a long track record of helping designers find producers, and Jenny Holloway of Fashion Enter, a former Marks & Spencer executive who has spent the past few years dedicating herself to setting up a not-for-profit organisation to provide employment and training opportunities for young people who are attracted to fashion but don't know how to approach it. The apprentices will be working between the departments at the Asos headquarters near Regent's Park and the Fashion Enter factory, where capacity is set to double by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, no less than Lord Alan Sugar, whose father was an East End tailor and whose siblings were factory machinists, is calling on the government to invest in garment-manufacturing skills and help equip "incubator factories" in empty warehouse buildings. "Not every young person is blessed with the brain to become an accountant, doctor or lawyer. It is those forgotten young people, who perhaps do not excel academically but do have a talent, who we could offer a future to," he said at a recent House of Lords debate.

It's not something that can happen overnight: setting up training, let alone new factories, is a long and laborious process which has to be overseen by people who are qualified, understand quality, and know how to direct a fashion business. But how great that the likes of Asos are already kicking things off.

Something kids are aware of these days is corporate responsibility - and irresponsibility. For a giant fashion company with a vast audience in the 16- to 24-year-old bracket, Asos's inspiring example will also create a valuable byproduct: the goodwill of girls who see a corporation doing something relevant and exciting to provide work for people of their generation. It's about time more high-street retailers cottoned on to that virtuous circle between British design, production, employment and customers: it's what everyone wants to see.